No, this post has nothing to do with the 2003 epic Tom Cruise movie that happens to be one of my all-time favorite flicks. 🙂 Rather, a little bird told me that Seiko has very recently indicated that their popular and lovable titanium “Samurai” divers are well on their way to total extinction.

As much as I liked “The Last Samurai” film, I liked the timepieces from Seiko that happens to share the same nickname even better.

And by that, I mean the SBDA-series, Japan market Seiko dive watches affectionately known as the “Samurai”.

Just when I thought I had seen an interesting new series of Rolex Submariner inspired SNZF11K/13K/19K sports watches (they were introduced not hardly three months ago) along comes their latest SNZF-series designs that stylistically, reek of the classic Monster divers

Although no official nickname has been bestowed on this latest offering from Seiko, I kind of liked the suggestion that someone threw in SCWF – the “Monster Jr” or “Monster Lite”. Since this watch appears to be within the size parameters of the original Monster divers, I thought “Monster Lite” would be the more befitting nickname.

Watch History

Background

I’m the sort of person who seldom buys watches on impulse unless the particular timepiece exerts a powerful influence on me that I had to go ahead and pull the trigger on one.

The saying goes like so: “a fool and his money will soon be parted”. Nothing could be further than the truth but in my case, I was a happy fool anyway! 🙂

After owning my first ever Citizen Eco Drive – a Nighthawk BJ7017-59ET, a watch that I had procrastinated buying for years, the leather-clad BJ7010-16F needed no further introduction for me. I knew how lovable a Nighthawk could be once I got accustomed to its looks and err…quartz based movement.

Watch History

Background

The SKX011J is the orange dialed 7s26-0020 diver from Seiko. It was first released in the mid 90s as the SKX011K, which was mostly probably targeted at the SE Asian market. The SKX011K has since been discontinued, while it’s unclear as to why Seiko stopped making the "K" version, it may be possible that the model wasn’t retailing too well.

Not too long ago, Seiko made a series of classic Kinetic divers with strong design influences from the world famous Rolex Submariner diver’s watch. These were fondly remembered as the “SKJ” Kinetic Sports divers and they remain the only homage copies of the Submariner with the Kinetic movement.

There were also only three generations of this style of Kinetic divers and they were marketed internationally as generic models, i.e. not belonging to any particular Seiko sub-range such as the Sportura, Arctura, Coutura, etc.

These models sat unnoticed in the midst of the many obscure Kinetic models that shared the same movement. Unlike the international sub-ranges like the Velatura, Premier and Sportura, Seiko didn’t spend on advertising the SKJ Kinetic divers. To the Seiko company, they’re just a few of their countless generic models – if you happen to like them, buy them!

I’ve owned this nice midsized Seiko 5 Sports for the past five years. It’s a Seiko 5 Sports “Seamaster”, model SNZ389J which also happens to be the first watch that I purchased from eBay. Ever since I got into my fad for larger sized watches, I found myself neglecting the SNZ389J too often. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I wore this watch but suffice to say it could have been at least two years ago.

A week ago I opened my watch drawer and remembered my nice blue dialed SNZ389J hibernating in its box. Since the watch is rather small, it shares a watch pillow with my Seiko 5 SNKE01K, which is an equally compact timepiece.

Without thinking I shook the watch to get it running, set the calendar and time and wore it. An hour later I glanced at my watch and I was surprised that it lost about 30 minutes. Uh-oh…that could spell trouble. 🙁